With the wireless network getting more and more popular, more and more users begin to access the network with a wireless network card. However, one wireless network card is usually used on several computers, making the traffic counting of surfing the network with a wireless network card more difficult. The traffic of surfing the network is currently counted by a traffic counting software equivalent to a network traffic monitor (DU Meter). Such traffic counting software stores the result of a traffic counting locally, so in the case where a wireless network card is configured to access the network on multiple computers, such traffic counting software cannot accurately count the actual traffic of surfing the network with a wireless network card.
At present, in order to count the traffic of surfing the network, Chinese Patent Application No. 200610124026.2 has provided a method for a network traffic counting. This application achieves traffic counting by requesting a subscription on network traffic, but only the traffic during this current connection. Moreover, the traffic acquired with this method is only stored locally. For a mobile wireless network card, if a user accesses the network through multiple computers with the same wireless network card, the total traffic of multiple network accesses of the same wireless network card cannot be counted by using this method.
The problem above makes it difficult for the user of a wireless network card to control the cost of surfing the network and pushes the user to inquiry the cost of surfing the network by telephoning the wireless network operator or by visiting the website of the wireless network operator, which often leads to a great difference in the cost of surfing the network estimated by the user and that charged by the wireless network operator, and further to a distrust of the user in the wireless network operator or even a complaint.
For this reason, the Chinese Patent Application No. 200310102404.3 provides a system for the authentication, authorization and billing of multiple Wireless Local Area Network (WLANs) operated by multiple WLAN operators, in which, when an authenticated user accesses the network, the authentication server instructs a billing server to start to calculate the cost of surfing the network; the fee calculation is ended when the user is offline, and the total fee is calculated according to the surfing fees. This patent can calculate the total cost of surfing the network for the current access of the user terminal in real time, but as the cost of surfing the network for each accessing is stored locally, for a user using one wireless network card to access the network through multiple computers, it is hard to accurately acquire the total cost of surfing the network of the current day and/or current month. Yet, the main reason why the user cares about traffic of surfing the network is that the user cares about their cost of surfing the network of the current day and/or the current month.
In addition, wireless network operators often update their charging standards, but users hardly acquire the up-to-date charging standards of their wireless network operators in time. The billing server disclosed in Chinese Patent Application No. 200310102404.3 cannot automatically update charging standards of wireless network operators. Therefore, when a wireless network operator changes a charging standard, if the fee is still calculated according to the former charging standard, the result will not be accurate any more.
It is thus clear that, the existing technologies are disadvantaged in that it is hard to accurately count the traffic of surfing the network with a wireless network card, which results in that it is hard to accurately calculate the cost of surfing the network, and it is also hard for the subscriber of a monthly payment service to know whether or not the traffic has exceeded a traffic quota.